jjramsey

Fair point. :redface:

Ben C Smith

That is a good point, of course, but fill in any big name from that era you wish, and the thrust remains. No way Irenaeus (for example) attacks docetism, gnosticism, adoptionism, and all the rest, but is simply not bothered by mythicism.

Ben.

Doug Shaver

I am presuming neither that nor anything else. It seems to me that you're doing all the presuming about exactly what would have crossed his mind.

Aside from that: What Roger said.


Nobody would have been stunned into silence by any argument. The historicists didn't have to silence their ahistoricist opponents. All they needed was that hardly anyone would have believed those opponents.

By the time the gospels became well known, nobody was in a position to prove that the central character had never even existed. For most people who heard the stories, the only live options were to take them at face value as accurate history or else to believe that they were greater or lesser distortions of something historical. Even today, most people, even some among the highly educated, find it easier to believe that a fantastic story, if somebody claims it to be factual, has some factual basis, however tenuous, than to believe it is wholly a product of someone's imagination.

To oversimplify, then, the proto-orthodox Christians would have had two kinds of opponents. One group would have said: "There was no Jesus." The other would have said: "OK, there was a Jesus, but he could not have been divine." The latter group would have won most of the bystanders who were unconvinced by proto-orthodoxy. Let just a few years go by, and there's nobody left saying there was no Jesus.

DCHindley

Well, I am stunned into silence.

The vast majority of "heretics" the proto-orthodox vilified and parodied were gnostics, and these saw Jesus as a divine redeemer. The only ones who believed Jesus was not divine were the Ebionites. The closest to this extreme view would be adoptionists, who believed the divine Chist joined with the human Jesus at his baptism, and this was actually the position of many early Christians well into the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE.

You make it sound like the only opponents the proto-orthodox felt worthy of refutating were "divine deniers," but it was anything but the case!

Another thing. How would one really differentiate between a Christ mythicist and a Christ realist when it was the doctrine that is being refuted, not the origin of it? Even if some of the opponents did not believe he was a real person, the proto orthodox would not likely mention this. In rhetoric, you carefully leave out of the argument anything that could be turned back at you by your real or imagined debating partner.

On the other hand, to believe that folks would fabricate a myth that included a man crucified by a real life Roman prefect seems absurd. It would be like pushing a rock uphill, as the authorities would instantly suspect sedition and take measures, which we know they did against Christiand, at least at times. There were plenty of models of mystery religions about that did not add this kind of counter-productive element. For example, Osiris was cut up and reconstituted, sure, but Osiris was never executed as a rebel by the Romans.

DCH

jjramsey

You were presuming that the point of that interpolation was to "answer those who were arguing that a man who had done the things attributed to Jesus would not have gone unnoticed by contemporary historians." That implies that the interpolator (1) either knew of an existing debate about Jesus' visibility to contemporary historians or (2) was anticipating such a debate and offered subtle assistance to future debaters. In the first scenario, you have neglected to take into account how the interpolation could actually be used in the debate. In the second, one has to marvel at the copyist's foresight.

You were also presuming that there were copies of the text that were under Christian control in the first place, which is not necessarily a good assumption for very early debates, especially when the texts in question are non-Christian.

Now, back to the topic thread.

Josephus' Antiquities comes out around 90 C.E. Consider that you had been arguing that the debate over historicity is an early one and was practically quashed by the gospels, which is why it was not mentioned by, for example, Irenaeus. The gospels also come out around roughly the same time as Antiquities, and possibly before it. Given this, you then have a pretty narrow time window for our would-be interpolator to have the motive ascribed to him, and at this early time, he is even more unlikely to have access to copies of Josephus, since they would likely be under pagan control.

Doug Shaver

I do seem to have overstated my point. Touche. Yes, I am presuming that a debate existed and that the interpolator knew about that debate.

I think Roger has addressed this well enough. I don't think we need to discern exactly how the copyist expected his contribution to be used. I think it suffices that he would, for good reason or not, have thought it possible that he was making a useful contribution to his cause. Practically the entire history of Christianity is, after all, a history of the triumph of hope over reason.

Well, yes, I was presuming that, too. So?

I don't get it. What does their being non-Christian have to do with it? Were Christians prohibited from owning books that were not produced by their sect? Were Christians not allowed to copy any books they happened to be in possession of? Was there some authority to whom they had to turn over any copies they made?

If they could possess some of Josephus's writings, and if they could copy those writings and distribute those copies among themselves, in what sense were they not in control of those copies?

Some early versions might have been produced that early. There is no clear evidence that they were widely known of within the Christian community until the middle or late second century. Although the period of serious debate would have been short, there is no knowing exactly when it must have occurred.

I think it bears repeating at this point that I'm not claiming the interpolator was trying to prove Jesus' existence. My hypothesis is he was trying to prove only that Josephus was not unaware of his existence.

Meaning what? Pagans authorities dictated who could own the book and make copies of it, and to whom they could pass those copies on? I don't think so.

Roger Pearse

Since my name is appearing in this increasingly strange and contorted debate of 'might have been's, I think that I must say that I think that JJRamsey is more right than you are, tho, Doug. We need to demonstrate Christian control of a text, not merely assert it.

For a text produced commercially outside Christian circles for non-Christians, we really do have to stump up some evidence, you know.

That said, we need to remember that nearly all surviving texts passed through various 'gates', where all subsequent copies were made from one (or perhaps a few) copies. The classic example of this is the transition from uncial to minuscule in the 9th century; as a rule all our texts are derived from a single, often now lost, 9th century minuscule text, which itself was copied from an uncial exemplar. Consequently interference with that single copy would be present in all the copies at our disposal. A similar process may have obtained in the transition from the roll to the codex during the 3-4th century, but of course we know much less about this. Note that none of this is evidence, incidentally; just background.

In short, is it enough to speculate on what might have happened? Don't we have to show that it did? This thread is very light on this, gents.

The idea that all the copies were interpolated, asserted without evidence -- I have not followed just why should we believe this? By default we always believe that texts are transmitted accurately. Any other course takes us straight to subjectivism, where any inconvenient piece of data is rejected as 'interpolated' while other data, transmitted identically, is accepted because convenient.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

jjramsey

Of course they could make and distribute among themselves. What they cannot do is ensure that the contemporary pagans will have the copies that they doctored, which severely curtails their ability to forge evidence for the sake of a debate with pagans.

But according to you, it was early enough to escape a mention by early Church fathers and to be squashed by the gospels, which puts it way earlier than the middle or late second century.

This is a distinction without much difference, since outside of a debate about Jesus' existence, there is little point in bringing up the verse in question to show that Josephus was not unaware of Jesus' existence.

I think one needs to to show at least that an interpolation is probable, and that the specter of interpolation is not brought up just to explain away something inconvenient. With enough ingenuity, one can come up with an explanation of why any bit of text could be an interpolation.

Roger Pearse

Definitely. It's so easy that we must not suggest interpolation without a specific piece of data that forces us to that conclusion.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Vorkosigan

Roger, this sort of textual apologetics would leave a scholar devoid of any room for application of critical insight. What is "data" and how "specific" must it be? Do you have an actual definition of what we need, or are you proffering this dictum as an apologetic designed to silence doubters?

Real critical insight takes into account many factors. Someone who was actually interested in understanding, and not merely defending, the "brother of Jesus" passage would take note of the following:

context:
Early christianity was a forgery mill. From the fake Paulines in and out of the NT, to the redacted, deleted, and altered gospels, early Christianity clearly evinced no respect at all for texts, and had an especial affinity for adjusting them for doctrinal and historical legitimation purposes. The existence of that context, known from many different texts, makes any reference to Jesus anywhere automatically suspect. To argue otherwise is to simply stick one's fingers in one's ears and pretend the ancients were simple-minded pious xerox machines when in fact they were a collection of literate and creative forgers wholly lacking in scruples and restraint, working with accepted fictive conventions whose goal was to make forgery look like history. Thus rather than waiting for that indefinable and utterly useless "specific piece of data" critical insight demands that all early references to Jesus be regarded as suspicious.

a second piece of contextual data should be noted: the existence of a disagreement among scholars of the text on the issue. Quite often the existence of a forgery is signaled in this way.

silence:
The ancient texts are silent on this interpolation. The silence is a very specific piece of data. I don't know whether it qualifies under the entirely subjective and I am sure, constantly in motion, Pearse Test.

specific data
The passage does not refer to the death of James. The passage already refers to a Jesus, Damneus, and undoubtedly referred to that Jesus prior to alteration. The greek of the passage echoes Matthew as spin has noted on prior occasions. The situation it describes is bizarre -- the head of a local sect is threatened with stoning by the head of a powerful family and the local elites don't like it and they sent to the King. The action of putting forth their power to protect a peasant sectarian leader from far galilee with no local connections makes less sense sociologically, but to protect the brother of Jesus Damneus, who was also from a high family and was one of them, makes perfect sense. So does the punishment, which neatly reflects the crime. The passage explains why Jesus Damneus got to be high priest, but his selection makes a lot more sense if the offense was done to his family.

Of course, I don't know whether all these specific points qualify under the entirely subjective and I am sure, constantly in motion, Pearse Test.

This is one of those things that sits up and barks INTERPOLATION! INTERPOLATION! INTERPOLATION! I don't think it is even necessary to note that if this were any other person in a text of any other nature, it would be critically considered and rejected, like the "no data" Damis and Appolonius interpolations in the Indian texts.

Michael